Bloodforged (28 page)

Raiza buried her sabre deep in the splintered fissure of the wound. The giantess gasped and crumpled to the ground, dead at last. Ulrika leapt her massive body and waded into the cultists in the corridor, with Raiza and the remaining men-at-arms falling in behind her. It was a slaughter, for the cultists were all choking and spewing blood, and still harassed by the hawks that clawed at their heads.

But just as Ulrika began to think they had won, a tremendous silent concussion struck her chest and tore through her mind, staggering her. It felt as if she had been hit by an ocean wave and slammed into a rocky shore. Raiza staggered too, and in the drawing room, Evgena and Galiana cried out in unison, clutching their heads and crashing to their knees. The red shimmer of their magic vanished, and all the hawks dropped to the floor, stiff and motionless, all at once.

‘Mistress!’ cried Raiza, stumbling to Evgena. ‘Are you hurt?’

Before she reached her, something big and black smashed through one of the room’s high windows, taking the curtains with it, and bounced across the rug to the fireplace, trailing dust. It was a bear’s head, the severed neck desiccated and bloodless.

As Ulrika turned the stare at the thing, a figure leapt into the broken window and crouched there, laughing with two voices. It was Jodis, the lithe, dreadlocked Norse mutant with the fat-mouthed goitre growing from her neck, naked and painted for war, her silvered long-knives at the ready.

Here they are, brothers!’ she called over her shoulder. ‘This is the heart of the nest.’

‘Hold the door!’ Ulrika barked at Evgena’s guards, then turned and ran at Jodis, howling with rage.

Ulrika started for her, snarling, but then, from the corridor, she heard more cultists thundering through the house. She cursed and shoved Evgena’s three remaining men-at-arms into the hall, shouting ‘Hold the door!’, then ran at Jodis, howling with rage.

The Norsewoman jumped down to meet her, while behind her, a dozen hulking, bare-chested marauders crashed through the rest of the windows, swords and torches in their hands.

Ulrika lunged low, trying to tear open Jodis’s naked belly, but the silvered knives turned the thrust and darted for Ulrika’s neck. Ulrika parried with her dagger, barely in time.

‘So, the sun didn’t kill you,’ Jodis said from both her mouths. ‘Good. I want the pleasure for myself.’

‘Then you should have come alone.’

She backed away, blocking on all fronts as Jodis and her wild men pressed forwards. She was too weakened from the sorcerous attack that had hurt Evgena and killed her pets to fight so many superior opponents. She felt faint and limp and hollow. A marauder swung a black long sword at her. She twisted aside, knowing she wasn’t going to be able to avoid it, but at the last second, Raiza appeared beside her and beat it away, clawing the marauder’s eyes with her metal hand.

‘Thank you, sister,’ Ulrika breathed, and focused again on Jodis.

Raiza fought on silently, angling to keep the Norsewoman and her men from reaching Evgena and Galiana. Ulrika did the same, but it was impossible. They were only two swords. They couldn’t hold back so many.

But then help came from behind. Weird wisps of red floated towards the marauders like spiderwebs on a breeze. Jodis and her men stumbled and shrieked as the strands tangled around their arms and heads, burning their flesh with each silky touch. Ulrika and Raiza took advantage, and cut down three men in an instant, then pressed Jodis back.

Ulrika dared a glance around. Evgena remained slumped, half-conscious, on the divan – the sorcerous concussion seemed to have struck her hardest – but Galiana hunched over her, her red wig askew and her thin arms outstretched. Red smoke came from her fingertips, then coalesced into drifting strands. At the door, Evgena’s men-at-arms fought more cultists in the corridor. They were holding. If Evgena recovered, they might all have a chance.

Then a movement over Jodis’s head brought Ulrika’s eyes up. A man in the hood and cloak of a cultist hunched in one of the shattered windows, something black glinting in his hand. He was raising it to throw.

‘Sisters!’ she called. ‘Look out! Kiraly!’

Raiza looked up as Kiraly threw the onyx shard straight at Evgena. With a roar, the swordswoman leapt, forgetting her opponents, and swatted the thing out of the air with her metal hand, sending it skittering across the floor as Kiraly drew a second shard.

Jodis took advantage of Raiza’s distraction and stabbed her in the ribs with a silvered dagger. The swordswoman stumbled, gasping, just as Kiraly hurled the second shard.

Raiza dived to knock it down too, but her wound made her clumsy, and instead she fell into its path. The black shard thudded into her chest, heart-deep. She shrieked and fell to the ground, clutching at it, and shrivelling into a slack-skinned skeleton before Ulrika’s eyes.

CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT

THE TELLTALE WOUND

The entire room, vampire, cultist and marauder alike, froze for an eye-blink at Raiza’s bloodcurdling scream and her hideous transformation.

Ulrika snapped from her paralysis first, fuelled by fury. Kiraly had killed the most honourable of the Lahmians of Praag, the only one Ulrika would have called friend. She hacked at Jodis, gashing her head and knocking her flat, then shoved through the marauders towards Kiraly, sword high.

‘Murderer!’ she roared.

The masked vampire whipped a third black shard from under his cloak, but then hesitated, as if weighing different targets, and in that instant, Ulrika slashed at him, her blade biting deep into his wrist. With a bellow of pain, he fell backwards out of the window, and Ulrika leapt up to the sill, making to spring out after him.

‘No, sister! Protect your mistress!’

Ulrika looked back. Little Galiana was dragging Evgena towards the fireplace as the marauders fought through her web of burning red threads to follow. Jodis lay where she had fallen, blood pouring from her head.

‘Guard our retreat!’ called Galiana.

Ulrika hesitated. Her soul howled for vengeance upon Kiraly, but she had vowed to defend Evgena with her life. She cursed and sprang back into the room, charging the backs of the marauders who were closing in on her mistresses. Vengeance would have to come later.

The Norsemen scattered as her rapier gashed their shoulders and necks, and Raiza was revealed, withered, lying where they had stood, her chest caved in around the now red-glowing shard that stuck from it. Ulrika couldn’t leave her. She caught her up and put her over her shoulder – she was as light and brittle as a sheaf of dried corn – then flailed her blade around at the marauders and stumbled through to Galiana and Evgena.

‘What now?’ she asked, lowering Raiza to the floor and turning to fight as the Norsemen closed back in around them.

‘The fireplace hides a stair,’ said Galiana, guiding Evgena towards it. ‘Hold them while I get the boyarina through it.’

‘Aye, sister,’ said Ulrika, slashing madly in every direction

Galiana whispered a short phrase and, with a rumble of hidden counterweights, the fireplace began to rotate. But before it had turned even a hand’s-breadth, Evgena’s men-at-arms, still doggedly defending the door to the corridor, staggered back, moaning and clutching themselves as if in ecstasy. The cultists surged forward, cutting them down and pouring into the room as, behind them, a tall, crook-backed figure in a purple robe limped in from the corridor, guarded by a hulking, paint-striped champion.

Ulrika cursed and redoubled her defence as the cultists joined the circle of marauders and attacked her while the crooked sorcerer raised his arms and began to chant.

‘Hurry, sister,’ she croaked.

The fireplace finished turning, revealing a narrow door, but before Galiana could help Evgena to it, snakes of purple energy exploded from the sorcerer’s hooded forehead, slipping around the marauders to lance straight at Ulrika and the Lahmians.

Galiana shrieked and swept her tiny hands in a broad arc, creating a lens of rippling air. The snakes punched through it without slowing, but came out pale violet shadows. Still they were enough.

Ulrika staggered back from the cultists and marauders as a tendril pierced her, and serpents of pain slithered through her guts, biting her from inside. Her foes pressed in. She could not hold them back. The pain was crippling.

‘Get her in,’ she rasped, flailing weakly at them. ‘Go!’

‘I cannot and hold the shield at the same time,’ hissed Galiana.

A figure in black and grey reeled into the room, looking around wildly, his rapier drawn. Ulrika stared. It was Stefan. He was covered in wounds and blood and alley muck, but he was alive. Alive!

‘Stefan!’ Ulrika called. ‘The sorcerer!’

Stefan seemed to take in the situation in an instant, and charged, slashing for the crook-backed sorcerer’s neck with his blood-smeared rapier.

The sorcerer’s champion spun as he came, and turned the cut with his sword, but only just. The rapier chopped through the meat of the sorcerer’s shoulder instead, and he staggered, yelping with surprise and pain.

Immediately the purple tendrils dissolved into nothing, and the serpents in Ulrika’s guts stopped biting. She slashed at the ring of cultists and marauders with renewed strength.

‘Now, sister!’ she cried. ‘Go! Stefan! To me! Hurry!’

Ulrika heard Galiana start dragging Evgena away as, through the blurring limbs of her attackers, she saw Stefan run unsteadily for her, the painted champion thundering after him. The mob parted before Stefan’s flashing blade and he crashed through to her, then faced out beside her and thrust the champion through the neck. He had a wound on his wrist that showed bone, and one on his forehead that made his face a crimson mask.

‘I’m sorry,’ he gasped as he helped her fight the rest. ‘I… failed to draw them away.’

‘Never mind,’ she said. ‘You’re here. You’re alive.’

‘It is not enough. I–’ His words died as he saw Raiza’s shrivelled body at their feet. ‘Kiraly,’ he breathed. ‘Kiraly was here?’

‘Yes,’ said Ulrika, impaling a cultist. ‘He–’ A grating rumble made her turn her head. ‘Mistress?’

Galiana and Evgena were no longer behind her, and the fireplace was rotating slowly closed, its hidden door narrowing.

‘Treacherous bitch!’ Ulrika snarled, then grabbed Stefan’s arm. ‘Back! Quickly! Through the door!’

Stefan looked around, then jumped back from his opponents and darted in. Ulrika took a last swipe all around, then caught Raiza’s body by the collar and dragged her through the closing gap as the marauders and cultists surged forwards.

The door boomed shut just as Raiza’s toes cleared it. Ulrika let go of her and turned, sword raised. Galiana stood at the head of a cramped spiral stair at the back of the tiny stone chamber they were in, staring down at Stefan while a red nimbus of energy brightened around her fingers. Her wig had come off entirely, lying like a dead spaniel at her feet and revealing her shrunken, wispy-haired head.

‘Don’t!’ Ulrika cried. ‘Will you attack the man who saved you?’

‘It was you he saved,’ whispered Boyarina Evgena. She was struggling to her feet behind Galiana, and raised her head with difficulty. Her already-lined face was now shrivelled and skeletal, and her voice was like the wind from a dry cave. ‘You led those madmen here hoping they would do your work for you, and got caught in your own trap.’

‘Mistress, it isn’t so,’ Ulrika pleaded. ‘If we were conspiring against you, why wouldn’t we attack you now?’

‘Ulrika is right, boyarina,’ said Stefan. ‘You are both weakened. Nothing would stop us from killing you here if we wished to.’

‘Except our backs are not turned,’ sneered Evgena.

Ulrika was going to reply when something clutched her ankle. She looked down. Raiza was gripping her with a withered hand, her parchment lips moving and her eyes shifting, agitated, in their sunken sockets.

‘Raiza,’ gasped Ulrika, kneeling down beside her. It seemed impossible the swordswoman was still alive. ‘Raiza, what is it?’

‘Fe… dor,’ Raiza murmured.

Ulrika leaned in closer as the others gathered around. ‘What do you say? I don’t understand.’

‘My… husband,’ whispered Raiza. ‘Where is my… husband?’

Ulrika opened her mouth, but said nothing. She had no idea what to say.

Evgena knelt down on the other side of the swordswoman and put a hand on her arm. ‘He is dead, beloved,’ she said, and Ulrika had never heard her voice so warm and kind. ‘But you had vengeance on his killers, as I promised you would. They are all dead by your hand. Now you may rest.’

Raiza stared blankly at her for a long moment, then let her head sink back. ‘Yes,’ she said. ‘Rest.’

As the life faded from the swordswoman’s eyes, Evgena reached out and pulled the Blood Shard from her sunken chest. It pulsed red like a beating heart.

‘And now,’ she said, ‘I will have vengeance on your killer.’ And with that, she lurched forwards, stabbing at Stefan with the shard.

Stefan dodged back, cursing, barely in time, and Evgena stumbled weakly after him, slashing wildly.

‘No, mistress!’ cried Ulrika, and caught her wrist.

Evgena struggled in her grasp, but she had no strength. She could not break free. ‘Unhand me!’

‘Mistress,’ Ulrika said. ‘He saved us! He could have stood by and let the sorcerer destroy us, but he put his own life in danger and defended us! Is that not proof enough that he means us no harm?’

‘He is von Carstein,’ Evgena snarled. ‘No proof is enough.’

A heavy thudding vibrated the walls of the little room. They all turned. The cultists were trying to break through the fireplace.

Evgena glared at the wall. ‘They shall die too. All of them. No one attacks me in my own home and lives.’

Galiana took Evgena’s arm. ‘Sister, we cannot stay here. Let us finish this argument at the safe house.’

‘He will not come there,’ said Evgena, turning her eyes back to Stefan. ‘I will have no spies there.’

‘I do not trust him either, mistress,’ said Galiana, raising her voice over the hammer-falls that boomed through the wall. ‘But the girl is right. He had ample opportunity to strike, and did not. He may have some ulterior motive, but if so, it does not seem to involve our immediate harm. These cultists are a greater threat. They mean to bring down the whole of Praag, and we will need all the tools at our disposal to stop them – even von Kohln.’ She picked up her wig and settled it on her wizened head. ‘Let us fight them together. We can resume our own war afterwards.’

Stefan bowed to Galiana. ‘I am in full agreement, mistress.’

Evgena sneered. ‘Of course you are.’

Another hammer-strike shook the room, and dust and pebbles rained down on her from the ceiling. She bared her fangs at the noise, then sighed and turned cold eyes on Stefan and Ulrika. ‘You will be watched,’ she said, then motioned them to precede her down the spiral stair.

Stefan hesitated, then bowed stiffly and limped past her. Ulrika picked up Raiza’s corpse and joined him.

As the two vampiresses fell in behind, Evgena held up the pulsing Blood Shard. ‘And remember what is at your back.’

The spiral staircase twisted down many storeys below ground until it opened into a network of ancient low tunnels that Ulrika, who had spent time in Karak Kadrin, was certain was dwarf work. They were not sewers or culverts, but whatever their original purpose, they were in surprisingly good shape – dry and sound, though dusty and filled with rats and scuttling insects. Ulrika was afraid that, like the sewers she and Stefan had traversed before, they would also be filled with mutants and soldiers fighting underground skirmishes, but they were not. There weren’t even any signs of previous occupants – no old fires, no heaps of trash or bones, no markings on the walls. The tunnels were as silent and undisturbed as an unlooted tomb.

At last they stopped at a blank wall. Evgena said a short phrase and a section scraped open, revealing another spiral stair. The house at the top of the stair was more modest than Evgena’s mansion, but still a large and comfortable place, with a small staff of servants and men-at-arms who showed no surprise whatsoever at their mistresses’ sudden appearance from behind a bookcase in the library.

Evgena fed immediately and without preamble upon one of the maids, then turned to her guests, wiping her mouth on a linen handkerchief, her face and form returned to their usual gauntness. She spoke first to Stefan, holding up the Blood Shard.

‘Raiza’s essence is trapped within this thing?’ she asked.

‘Yes, boyarina,’ said Stefan, inclining his head.

‘Can she be freed? Can she be returned to her body?’

‘I hope so,’ said Stefan. ‘For Kiraly holds my master’s essence in another. But I have been told it is impossible.’

Evgena nodded, then motioned to Ulrika. ‘Leave her body here. I will keep it and the knife until I can learn more.’

Ulrika bowed and laid Raiza’s body on a library table as Evgena turned next to Galiana.

‘Sister,’ she said. ‘Send word to our friends and agents. We will work the day through to cancel the concert and get a warning to the duke.’

‘Yes, mistress,’ said Galiana, curtseying.

‘Once we are certain Praag is safe, we can hunt down and destroy the cult, but until then…’ Evgena smiled at Ulrika and Stefan darkly. ‘I think it best if we kept our
allies
safely out of harm’s way.’ She waved her fan at her men-at-arms. ‘Lock them in the cellar.’

‘Mistress!’ cried Ulrika sharply. ‘You insult us! I have sworn allegiance to you. Stefan has saved your life. What more must we do to win your trust?’

Evgena stared hard at them for a moment, then turned and laid the Blood Shard on Raiza’s chest. ‘I can think of only one way,’ she said. ‘Follow my dear daughter’s example, and die in my defence.’